


Nothing You Dismay

by Shachaai



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Christmas Eve, Christmas nonsense, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-25 21:37:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20032744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: Christmas Eve with the Iberians and Italians means friendship and family - but mostly a bunch of dumbasses bickering.





	Nothing You Dismay

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from my tumblr (winter 2016).
> 
> The Nations mentioned here all have traditions about gathering for special seafood/meatless meals on Christmas Eve. Some years, they probably (try to) do it together.

_“No,” _ says Portugal, and slaps the spoon he’d just been using to stir his potatoes in their pot on the stove down on his brother’s hand when he catches Spain sneaking his fingers towards the already-prepared codfish on the kitchen bench beside him. _ Again. _

_ “Hot!” _ Spain yelps in his native tongue, snatching his hand back again and nursing it to his chest like the injured puppy his _ pout _ seems determined to imitate. “Are you trying to burn me?”

Considering the jumper below said pout is covered in garishly multicoloured snowmen looping stick hands around Spain’s torso, Portugal remains uncharmed. To make his point clear, he answers in Castilian as well. “If you touch my fish: _ yes._”

“It’s _ Christmas_!”

“And you will heal.” Portugal is not inclined towards sympathy; after Spain had finished the prepwork for his fish and shellfish soup for their dinner that evening, he had immediately started making a nuisance of himself for everyone else. Portugal has lost count of the times Andorra has scolded Spain for taking her biscuits, and South Italy has threatened to eviscerate Spain with one of the candy canes on Spain’s own Christmas tree if Spain steals another one of his damn olives before dinner is ready.

Spain sniffs at him, still cuddling his hand. “My hand, maybe, but not the wounds on my _ heart._ ”

“Yes, yes, I will light a candle for its swift recovery.” Portugal waves his spoon again, pointing it at the doorway. Spain’s soup is being kept warm on the stove with little maintenance, but Portugal has to see if his own cooked codfish is still warm, and his potatoes and vegetables are almost done. Keeping an eye on the meal _ and _ Spain and his food-thieving ways at the same time will be troublesome. “Now get out of the kitchen.”

“It’s _ my _ kitchen!”

“And your work in it is done. _ Go,_” says Portugal, spoon back in the pot again but head jerked instead at the doorway. It had been easier shepherding six small and hungry colonies at once rather than one hungry little brother. The colonies had understood _ fear of God. _ Unlike _ Spain, _ they had also understood _ fear of Portugal after he discovers the larder is mysteriously empty. _ “You should take your bread through for the table.”

Spain’s eyes go large and wounded. “But they’ll _ eat _ it.”

“Yes, I have been reliably informed that that is the _ point _ of bread?” If Portugal gets any food on his navy bauble-covered and snowflake-patterned jumper because he is paying too much attention to Spain rather than cooking, Spain will be _ wearing _ his soup. It is Christmas Eve, and Portugal has an ugly jumper competition to win.

“Table’s set.” Romano interrupts the conversation with his usual lack of grace, bold and brassy in English, striding into the kitchen and almost walking straight into Spain. He stops barely a breath away, raising his hands to give Spain an irritated shove in the side. “The fuck are you hovering in the doorway for, _ stupido?_”

“_Roma, _ don’t swear on Christmas,” says Spain, frowning, right as Portugal says:

“Sulking over his sins.”

Sensing - correctly - that he is going to get absolutely _ no _ sympathy from Portugal after attempted fish-theft, Spain decides to try Romano’s love and Christmas tenderness towards the world once more, holding out his smacked hand for the younger Nation to see. “Roma, do you see what he did to me?”

…If Spain’s hand was ever burnt, it has already healed. Now, under the kitchen lights, after being cradled so tenderly to Spain’s snowman-guarded bosom, the skin is hardly even _ pink _ anymore.

Romano regards it silently for a few moments. Then, he looks up at Portugal. “You should’ve hit his head.”

“I would have damaged my spoon,” says Portugal.

Everyone has brought something for the dinner, both food and wine. They pile it all at once on the table artfully covered in winter greenery and flowers by Veneziano, his and Romano’s best silverware and Andorra’s finest glasses gleaming in the light of candles among the boughs. Between them, the two parts of the Nation of Italy have brought three different kinds of antipasti (two bowls noticeably missing more than a few olives, which Romano is still shooting Spain dirty looks for), and a marvellous panettone studded with candied orange peel. Seborga has brought a well-dressed octopus salad, and Spain provides a bowl of round, bright oranges, his fish and shellfish soup and generous slices of fresh bread. Portugal serves up his codfish with boiled potatoes and green vegetables, and his tray of moulded marzipan sits well beside Andorra’s offerings of chocolate and almond turrons and biscuits made with honey and crushed almonds.

Nobody dies. Portugal gets a bruised shin after both Romano and Spain kick him under the table as a prompt to say grace before he puts his hands on the soup (because they can be useless godless heathens for the _ rest _ of the year - quoth Romano, ignoring Veneziano’s distressed eyes beside him at _ useless - _ but on the eve of the birth of _ Christ our Lord _ they are going to _ goddamn well say grace before eating if it fucking kills them_). Seborga ends up with a shellfish in his lap and Veneziano takes an olive to the eye, but nobody dies.

The wine is good, the food is better, and between the two they all mellow out, the table laughing and throwing in the towel with amused horror when they mutually decide that Seborga wins their ugly jumper competition. Seborga’s jumper is luminous green, covered in weird red _ bobbles _ on the noses of truly hideous dancing cartoon reindeer, and _ sings _ when someone presses the stomach of the lead reindeer whose knitted yellow eyes will, Andorra swears, haunt her for the rest of her life. He wins a chocolate snowman and exemption from the washing up, and then wins a great deal more in everyone’s good books when he waits ten minutes and then helps with the clearing and washing up anyway.

“_Some _ people understand what Christmas means,” Spain grumbles to Portugal as Seborga passes them heading for the kitchen, his arms full of bowls. Spain has his own arms full of flowers, trying to look for somewhere to put them whilst Portugal moves the tablecloth. “Kindness, generosity- _ ow!_” Spain leaps away from Portugal like a scalded cat, his expression _ betrayed _ and his ear rapidly turning pink. “You _ flicked _ me?!”

“_Sim,_” says Portugal, smiling at the other both serene and insincerely. “I can very generously do it again, if you would like?”

Spain throws a poinsettia flower at him. It falls short by half a metre, and flutters very anticlimactically to the floor. When Portugal starts to laugh, Spain goes straight back to sulking at him.

“Come here,” says Portugal, relenting at last and setting down the tablecloth. It _ is _ Christmas - or Christmas Eve, anyway - so he can open his arms to his nuisance brother and neighbour, Spain warily setting down his burden of flowers as well to edge closer.

So much _ suspicion _ in Spain’s eyes. (With their history, and Portugal’s methods of retaliation against his brother, somewhat warranted.) “…Are you going to injure me again?”

“Only if you do something that deserves me injuring you,” Portugal assures Spain, and smiles when Spain comes to embrace him anyway, Spain’s arms looping tightly around Portugal’s waist and his warm head burying itself determinedly in Portugal’s shoulder. Barnacle love: some things never change, even after centuries.

Portugal lays his cheek against Spain’s curls, content to hold his brother back and enjoy the moment of affectionate peace. It comes so rarely, for politics eats up their time when they ought to be bonding, and Spain regularly casually lets himself into Portugal’s home and eats the good ham and desserts in Portugal’s fridge/larder right when Portugal is beginning to miss his brother, thus eliminating both the distance between them and all of Portugal’s fonder feelings.

“Your codfish was boring,” says Spain, muffled in Portugal’s jumper.


End file.
